


better alone (than in bad company)

by KING (pelted)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Blame the Witches, Gen, Grisly Depictions of Gross Dead Bodies, Monster Hunter AU, Past Character Death, Past Violence, dragon rider au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 04:51:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14097588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pelted/pseuds/KING
Summary: Ahsoka Tano, slayer of griffins and manticores, exorcist of demons and devils, purger of yaoguai and tamer of kirin, had never met a dragon.That was because, unlike everything else she would rightly boast about, dragons no longer existed.(In which the world, as always, does its best to prove Ahsoka wrong.)





	better alone (than in bad company)

Ahsoka Tano, slayer of griffins and manticores, exorcist of demons and devils, purger of yaoguai and tamer of kirin, had never met a dragon.

That was because, unlike everything else she would rightly boast about, dragons no longer existed.

A bold statement in a world such as theirs, yes, but nonetheless true.

Dragons _had been_ real in the same sense that dinosaurs and mermaids _had been_ real. This, she told every blurry-eyed drunk who begged her for a story in the gloom of a wayside tavern. This, she explained tiredly to passing foot-soldiers, half of whom swore a dragon had been the reason they lost their recent battle. This, she did not correct bright-eyed children about, for she too had once hoped to be a dragon rider like the stories of old, and dragon-tales were not the worst a child could believe in.

This, a day after she had made a very foolish mistake, a man in an unflatteringly beige tunic and tabard, his sword peace-knotted in a faded leather scabbard contradicted her on.

The day outside was bright, though the meager one-horse town stood not a half-day’s walk from a newly bloodied battlefield. It had survived intact and unraided only by virtue of having nothing but the Empire’s flag, apple trees too young to bear fruit, five skinny chickens, one dry cow, and a single plow-horse. The elderly left to tend the land were not much to look at; the fairer men and women, gone to war for their Empire; and the children, too young to be of interest for any but the most depraved.

Ahsoka had been happening through, and stopped to inquire about missing husbands and drafted soldiers. News of deaths rarely returned to the town, and in the early spring-weather - which fostered few demons and made most monsters so lazy about their pillaging as to be of little interest to winter-ravaged villages -, tracking down and confirming those who had departed made up the bulk of Ahsoka’s business. Occasionally a particularly distraught soldier made for a malicious spirit, but human ghosts that simply had gotten stuck on their way to the Beyond were hardly worth real worry.

An old mother of six, five of whom had already been lost to the civil war and the last of whom left months ago to fight, begged to know of Ahsoka’s skills. 

And so she had listed them, from most to least impressive. By the end, her hand had rested on her sword’s, _Fulcrum’s_ , hilt, and she’d puffed up her chest in pride at the old mother’s clear admiration. 

Next to her, tied loosely to a free-standing fence-post, her pony-steed _Artoo_ snorted and tossed his head. 

Ahsoka ignored the implied slight.

“Would you seek my daughter?” She had asked, eyes wide and watery. “I beg of you, good or bad, any news at all would put this old woman’s heart at rest.”

Ahsoka had glanced the woman over, her sympathy at war with her (concerningly low) coin-purse.

It wasn’t much of a war. The coin-purse won by necessity.

“I would require payment,” Ahsoka hedged.

The woman nodded vigorously. “Yes! Yes, I can pay… in foods, or crafts, or--”

“Coin?” She asked, skeptical.

“Not coin,” the woman mumbled, shoulders drooping. But then she straightened up, hands clasping before her chest. “How about what you find? My daughter, she went to slay the black dragon. If she has slayed it, tell her that her mother demands she split the proceeds with you. If she has not, and you instead slay it--”

“Wait, wait,” Ahsoka interrupted, eyebrows climbing as high as her indignation, “ _black dragon?_ I thought your daughter went to war.”

The woman’s nose wrinkled. “My Ventress? Oh, no. She is not one for fighting other’s battles. She went to slay the black dragon, for rescue, its bounty and its beauty.”

Ahsoka tried and failed to keep her unimpressed frown off her face.

“The black dragon. Right.”

“What is wrong?” Confusion colored the woman’s face.

“It’s just,” Ahsoka hesitated, wondering if she should burst the woman’s happy delusion about her daughter’s made-up goal, and then decided that yes, she would, “dragons don’t exist anymore. The last died centuries ago.”

The woman looked at her as if _she_ were the crazy one.

“Not the black dragon. He lives in the old Count’s Tower - the one that is a five day’s ride to the south, nestled in the ruins of Serenno. There he keeps Naboo’s princess hostage, and has for years. Only the fallen General Kenobi has ventured to the dragon’s lair and returned alive, but my Ventress believed herself strong enough to finish his failed rescue of the princess.”

“Naboo’s princess,” Ahsoka echoed. Naboo didn’t even sound like a real place! “ _Right._ Listen, I don’t think--”

“Oh, please!” The woman begged, and lurched forward; Ahsoka tried to ward her off, but she wrapped her gnarled hands in Ahsoka’s maroon vest and yanked her forward. For such an old woman, she had quite the grip! “Ventress is the last I have. I must know what became of her!”

“Okay,” Ahsoka agreed, if only to get her to let go, “okay. Tower in Serenno. The old Count’s place. Sure. I can take a look for your daughter.”

“You will?”

“I will.”

“You promise?”

“Yes, yes. I, uh, promise.”

The woman leaned forward - and though she had been a hunched creature, standing at hardly half Ahsoka’s height, she seemed to rise to Ahsoka’s eye-level. Her eyes, a grey-blue that pierced into Ahsoka’s soul, pinned the hunter in place.

“You promise,” she murmured, low and unsettling, the frail woman from before gone in a flash, “and so you shall deliver, Ahsoka Tano.” 

_Witch!_ screamed Ahsoka’s mind, but her body refused to comply. She had wards for witches-- but taken by surprise, there was little to be done. Not that she knew from experience - she had never before been taken so off-guard.

By her side, Artoo whinied and shied away, his rope slipping easily from the fencepost.

She felt the witch’s words scratch with a cold claw across her heart the terms of their deal. It was a light but no less chilling experience-- and then the witch smiled, letting go to snap her fingers in front of Ahsoka’s eyes, and-

She blinked, and the witch was gone.

The chill was not. It lodged in her heart, and would not cease until she turned herself southward.

Inwardly, she cursed. Her teacher Plo Koon’s words about making promises without knowing her audience rang about her skull, but they did little good other than bring her already soured mood even lower. After all, her soul had already been tied to the spell’s terms.

Artoo watched nervously from tiny, barren trees away, his dark ears pinned back and silvery tail lashing. 

“That old witch better be right, because only a princess’s ransom could bring my mood up right now,” Ahsoka told him as she stomped to his side, replacing his halter for a proper bridle and bit. 

_That or the Rebellion’s success,_ she privately thought. She’d much rather be working for them. If Organa hadn’t ordered her to lay low after the Barriss debacle… 

A different sort of pang stung her heart. 

She shook her head and swung herself onto Artoo’s back. 

If news of her daughter was _all_ the witch wanted - and the terms said it was - then the dragon’s lack of existence didn’t matter. She’d find Ventress, or what was left of Ventress, fulfil her promise, and move on to the next town in need of the supernaturally attuned. 

At least Serenno was only five days away.

\- - -

The ride began easy enough.

The first day, she passed a spice-dealer’s caravan. The leader - who did not look like a spice-dealer - breezily introduced himself as Hondo and invited her to lend her sword to his equally unprofessional-looking guards. He did not bother her further when she coldly declined ( _he was no spice-dealer_ ), said she had other concerns to attend to, and moved on. 

It was perhaps because while her grey cloak, frayed-but-richly-colored clothes and very nicely outfitted war-pony would have fetched a fine price on the market, the dual swords at her hip and grisly griffin’s skull hanging from Artoo’s saddle marked her as a hunter, and not worth the fight.

That was what she liked to think, anyway.

The first evening, she stopped at an inn that had seen better days. The muskrat stew was tough, more reedy vegetables and scraps than good meat, but did its job. 

There, she met the man too old to believe in dragons who told her in no small terms that she should cease her trip to Serenno lest she encounter the black dragon.

He’d overheard her asking the bartender if anyone spoke of a black dragon roosting in the Count’s Tower. The bartender had said yes, though she had never experienced the dragon herself and, if it were true, the beast was remarkably polite in keeping to itself. 

She then pointed Ahsoka to a man hunched at the end of the bar, though with a whispered warning that old Ben was a well-meaning but odd soul, and she should take what he said with a whole heaping of salt.

“Does a beast so famous not have a name?” 

She had been unable to keep the bite from her voice. She wished she was not headed to Serenno; the man, who looked better suited for a sad hermitage atop a lonely mountain, did not need to tell _her_ that she didn’t want to go.

“Some call him Darth Vader-- the ancient folk’s word for _father of dragons_.”

“Intimidating,” Ahsoka deadpanned. “You do know dragons haven’t lived for centuries, right? I’d know. I’m a hunter. I specialize in this sort of thing.”

“He’s the last of his kind.” Absurdly, the man sounded sad for the fictional beast. “Born centuries out of time in the living fires of Mount Mustafar.”

He then looked at Ahsoka in a way she didn’t like at all, with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Perhaps you will be able to reach him where... others failed,” he said. “Though you hunt, though you are clever beyond your years, you have a kindness to you.”

“Thanks,” Ahsoka said, without meaning it. _This guy doesn’t even know me!_ “But kindness doesn’t usually help with slaying monsters.”

His smile slipped. 

“No. I suppose it doesn’t.”

He turned his attention to his half-full mug, seemingly distracted by his own thoughts on the matter.

She hurried to regain his attention, itching to be done with the conversation and its - useless - information gathering. She wasn’t entirely sure why she was keeping it going, except that she was morbidly curious about what a crazy old man thought dragons were like.

“But, er, these others-- what’d they try to do that made them fail?”

“Dragons are very intelligent creatures,” the man murmured, so Ahsoka had to strain to hear him. “As smart as man, though many like to forget that because they do not speak our tongue. They are not bound by rules like the fairies, or malice like a demon, or even-- some say- time itself. They heed only their riders, if any; and even then, it is at their whim.”

It was sort of interesting, she supposed. The rider bit was new. No dragon-tale told of _riders._

Ben continued on a sigh. It sounded as sad as he looked, which was very.

“He feels very deeply.”

 _He,_ now?

“And passionately. As if Mustafar’s fires burn still in his heart.” Another twisted smile, bitterness lingering at its edges. “I believe he loved his rider so much, he could not see beyond her.”

“Sure,” she said, fidgeting under the bar with her shirt’s hem. Ben was starting to make her feel bad for him, though there really was no reason to get caught up in a sad hermit. “Who’s this skywalker’s rider, then?”

“The princess of Naboo, Padme Amidala.”

Ahsoka sputtered.

Ben looked to her, faintly - politely, almost - curious.

Because he didn’t seem to get the joke, she tried to let him in on it. 

“ _Padme Amidala?_ ” Her incredulity shined through. “She’s been missing for thirty years! Everyone knows she’s dead.” 

“Yes,” Ben said, after a pause. His eyes - blue and distant, so very distant - did not leave hers. “She knew with a dragon at her disposal, her power was too great for her to remain on the throne. She did not wish to become a tyrant as… other kingdoms at the time. Instead, she used her scaled companion’s ability to travel far without tiring to venture across the great seas, hoping to return with those far-away land’s medicines and philosophies, as none before had managed.

“She took only one other with her,” he continued, voice quieting, “for no one else would the dragon allow upon his back. They flew for days across those seas. 

“What they found… was not what they ever could have expected.”

Ahsoka stared at him. 

He gazed back, the salt-pepper of his hair, the shadows under his eyes and the lines around his mouth all telling of his life’s regrets.

Awkwardly, she cleared her throat, glanced quickly at the window, cited a need to sleep early and rise early, slapped two coppers down for the stew, and excused herself from the crazy.

\- - -

The second and third days proceeded without incident.

She passed mercenaries, but they caught one look of her griffin’s skull and decided it best to keep to the tree-line. That was fine with her.

The land around her grew lush and overgrown. Wild. The Empire had its principal business much farther north, with modern trade routes circling its productive cities and towns rather than dipping so far away. Moreover, Count Dooku of Serenno had challenged the Empire thirty-three years prior - which had predictably turned out very poorly for the Count and his separatist followers, to the point that anyone associated with the southern lands was guilty until proven innocent.

Setting up outposts would have been a waste of the Rebellion’s resources, so far away was the nearest port or flourishing town. That, and the wilderness invited monsters, both natural and fantastical.

The road she rode upon began to disappear as grasses and a lack of foot- and cart-traffic returned it to its natural state. Soon, she found herself picking through meadows filled with spring’s white and yellow wildflowers; then, a sparse, young forest; and, finally, a winding creek that widened quickly into a river comfortable in its southern flow.

In the morning of the fourth day, she happened upon yet another old human (and privately decided she was getting sick of the elderly, though they grossly outnumbered the youth given the war). This one was dressed richer than the witch or Ben, his robes a deep purple, the hems embroidered in silver.

His eyes, though gentle, were set deep in their sockets. His hand, when he raised it to hail Ahsoka through the forest’s thicket, was bone-thin, the skin peppered with liver spots.

She hesitated before she approached him. She pinched salt between her fingers and tossed it, discreetly behind the cover of Artoo’s thick neck, in his direction. It fell as normal, without being repelled. That was a good sign, but not conclusive.

In the end, she took a locket of kirin’s mane from another pouch and tucked it into her sleeve as she approached him, mindful of its temperature. If it rose in heat even a smidgen, the old man was bad news, and she was _gone._

As she rounded a tree’s wide trunk, she noted his cart filled with cut herbs and pots of minerals. A large blue cat with curved ivory horns atop its head slept at its front, heedless of the yoke upon its shoulders or ropes around its torso and thick neck. Silver runes that matched the ones on the man’s sleeves glimmered dully in the rope’s leather.

“Brave hunter,” he said once she came close enough, tucking his hands into his sleeves.

“Warlock,” she answered, stiff.

“In title only, I assure you,” he said, his demeanor polite, pleasant and oddly, for his _title_ , civilized. “I mean no harm to you or humankind. I am simply an academic interested in the arts.”

“The _dark_ arts.”

“Are words alone to determine what is light or dark?” He returned, his smile kind and indulgent. “I believe action speaks louder, my dear hunter. Now, what could possibly bring one such as yourself so far from civilization?”

The kirin’s mane didn’t heat, but she nudged Artoo away from the man all the same. The witch’s spell eased its grip on her heart as she continued to the Tower - though her legs were stiff from days of straight travel, and she very much would still rather turn around.

“I have no reason to tell you. Good day, warlock.”

“Is it the black dragon?”

Her shoulders stiffened. Artoo, sensing her sudden change in interest, halted.

Slowly, she looked over her shoulder at the man.

He tsked, shook his head, and smiled-- a light, annoyingly patronistic thing.

“They do say his hoard is mighty.” The warlock paused, his eyes narrowing slightly. Ahsoka triple-checked her mental shields, just in case. “But, no. I don’t think you have interest in that, do you?”

“Dragons have long been dead,” she responded, though for the first time, she felt she may need to reconsider her stance on that fact. 

Warlocks were, more oft than not, a demon in disguise. But demons did not lie. And human Warlocks rarely found other humans worth their time enough to play mind games.

“Perhaps so,” the human conceded. “But in the case that it is not the case… I imagine you are in need of a weapon worthy of such a powerful beast.”

“Something you have on hand?” Ahsoka asked, curiousity and caution warring in her mind.

(Curiousity _always_ won out.)

“As a matter of fact, yes.” 

The Warlock shuffled his way to the other side of his cart and ruffled through his inventory. Soon, he pulled out a small, black pouch. When he held it up, whatever was inside clinked. 

“Onyx shards, forged in the fires of Mount Mustafar itself. From whence a dragon is born, so shall it be slain.”

Mustafar again, huh? It matched up eerily well to crazy Ben’s story, but then, maybe there were teachings about dragons Plo Koon had never given her. Because dragons were long, _long_ gone.

“The black dragon has monstrous power,” the Warlock continued, his eyes locked on the inconspicuous pouch he held aloft. “With a single breath, it could level a town. With a beat of its wings, it would sink the Emperor’s best ship. It rests now in the Tower, yes, but for how long?”

Ahsoka frowned, but couldn’t deny the Warlock’s point. Dormant monsters were some of the worst. They lay under the ground or hid in the trees, so people thought it was safe to build or cultivate, and then-- once families grew and farms spread, they wrecked the highest degree of havoc upon otherwise peaceful people.

The Warlock must have been aware of that as well, as he said, “To slay it would be to do the world a great favor.” 

Then, “To do so, you must feed it one of these shards. The mineral is poison to the beast - it will fall within an hour after.”

Except there wasn’t going to be a black dragon at the old Counter’s Tower.

…

But just in case, she exchanged a vial of her pixie dust for the onyx. 

“What?” She told Artoo later, after putting distance between her and the Warlock. “I like to be prepared.”

The pony, annoying as he was, tossed his head and snorted-- _skeptically._

\- - -

The fifth day marked itself in more than simply her reaching her destination.

Lush greenery gave way to scorched land. What had once been mighty trees stood as charred stumps or ashy, hollowed-out logs. No bird flew overhead, and no creature scurried through the dust. The river, once a crystalline, clear blue, ran grey and brown with soot.

Artoo became very reluctant to continue forward. It was only with heels dug into his sides and Ahsoka’s (nervous) yelling that he continued forward, and even then, it was at a stilted walk.

They passed fallen warriors, and Ahsoka tried not to stare. Knights in dented and burnt armor, charred carts with broken wheels, fallen horses and donkeys and oxen, the latter half often accompanied by humanoid skeletons too unprotected to be warriors. She passed large groups of them intermittently - as if they had been fleeing.

She longed to turn away, but the witch’s spell drove ice into her heart whenever she so much as pulled Artoo to a stop. 

“Never make promises you don’t intend to keep,” she muttered to Artoo, who snorted and pawed at the ground. “Yeah, okay, _you_ didn’t make a promise, but we’re a package deal, buddy. You’re stuck with me.”

It would be a lie to say the witch alone was why she continued forward. Her teacher had always said she had a knack for involving herself in the reckless and impossible.

But… the Warlock, old Ben, the _witch herself_ \-- all of their stories combined with such grisly, fire-made destruction-- _well._

Maybe there was... a dragon.

“Or a cow knocked over a lantern, and the good old Count hadn’t prepared for a housefire,” she reasoned aloud. 

Her instinct, which had always steered her right (except in Barriss, but that-- was not something she’d think about right then), didn’t agree.

The old Count’s Tower, it turned out, was not simply a Tower. It was a _fortress_ , complete with a moat and drawbridge. Its stone walls, grey streaked with ashy black, rose well over ten times Ahsoka’s height, and spanned wide enough for a small village to live within.

The infamous Tower stood in what she guessed was the complex’s center. Its roof was sheer black, minus a sizable caved-in hole on its western slope. Its sidings looked as crisped as the rest of the fortress, too, and the longer she stared, the more she noticed that it leaned precariously to the east. 

The fortress had been made to withstand the test of time, but it hadn’t fared well against the fire-fueled siege. Something about that struck her as impressive, though absolute trepidation tempered her awe.

 _Un_ fortunately, the drawbridge had been left open.

Artoo took two steps onto the old wood, heard it creak, and reared up with a cry.

“Hey!” Ahsoka shouted, trying both hold onto her seat and get him under control-- which she managed, but soon found that he _refused_ to take another step onto the bridge.

“You’re going to make me go in there _alone?_ ” She asked him, incredulous, after she’d slipped off his back, swung to his front, and snagged his bridle between her hands, staring him straight-on.

The pony danced left and right, trying to rip his head from her hands. It was lucky he didn’t bite her, probably, with how terrified he was.

 _Yes, I am,_ his eyes said, the whites showing clearly. _Good luck, master. Try not to become too crispy._

He tossed his head, and she lost her grip. Then he shied to the side, reared again, and launched himself _away_ from the bridge.

She scrubbed a hand across her face, sighing to herself. At least she’d strapped the Warlock’s pouch to her belt, and she had her swords, a dagger, her buckler…

She was, hypothetically, as ready as she could be to face whatever lurked inside.

The moat’s water was still and stale, the sides gummed with a thick red-brown that she didn’t want to think too much about. 

The inside of the fortress matched the outside. Lining the courtyard were structures collapsed in on themselves. The dead littered the courtyard - less fallen peasants, more a variety of armored men and women, their shields and colors ranging from Empire-red to unknown yellows, blues, greens and more. 

Ahsoka took a moment to stare at the bodies, to offer a prayer to the Goddess in hopes wraiths weren’t in her near future, steeled her nerves and began up the castle’s main steps.

Count Dooku had been a powerful man, and it showed in the grandeur size of his hall. Once, it might have been filled with exquisite tapestries and portraits and rugs and furs, but now, only metal and stone survived. Empty and overturned candlesticks laid at the end of the hall, before another staircase; when she looked up, half of a chandelier hung from rusted chains, its crystals glinting dully in the afternoon’s light; and around them, all windows - once of the finest glass - had blown out.

Worse yet: despite all the signs of a fire, the fortress’ interior was _cold._ Ahsoka had to wrap her arms around herself, the chill settled so immediately and completely into her bones.

She needed to find Ventress and get out of there.

The witch’s magic played an elaborate game of hot-and-cold with her insides: she went up the stairs, but then felt her heart freeze until she turned to the left-most passage. From there, she was led through winding halls, through low doors and into narrow passageways for servants, up a spiral staircase, across a punched-in hole in the floor, down another staircase - all in all, a round-about way to a relatively small, low-ceiling kitchen, which was where she at last found herself.

Not once had she passed a skeleton-- or any creature, living or dead.

That was not a fact she wanted to think much about.

She found the first body wedged behind the brick-stone oven, rot just barely beginning to set in given the kitchen’s dry air and lack of insects or rodents. Decay wafted up to offend Ahsoka’s nose. Its dull red breastplate had been torn asunder by two massive claws, and punctured further by what had either been teeth or steel-tipped spears; its bracers were crushed, one arm missing entirely, the old brown of its spilled blood soaking through its tabard; and its helmet, placed calmly in its lap, had a nasty dent on the side, like its owner had been knocked aside from a great, great force.

The woman’s face, tattoos running from her mouth and eyes, was sharp even in death. She had not been an inexperienced fighter - she would have gone in with certainty that she would leave, for she had prepared everything she could to ensure the battle was in her favor.

She was a witch’s daughter, but hadn’t stood a chance against what beast she found.

And yet, somehow, she had managed to escape its attacker and find a peaceful place to die. 

That was the only reason the body remained, Ahsoka then understood. _All other attackers…_

Ooh, okay, bad thought process. She was just going to freak herself out, thinking like that.

Most importantly: the grip on her heart eased, the magic giving her a twinge of sadness that was not her own as it found its target, understood the news, and dissipated to inform the witch, wherever she was. It freed Ahsoka of itself, like a heavy burden off her shoulders.

Knowing Ventress’s fate, she could leave.

She desperately wanted to leave. This was no longer a fortress for the mortal.

Gathering herself after the conclusion of her impromptu quest, she retraced her steps out of the kitchen and back to the main hall. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end as she moved, quiet but swift. Gooseflesh ran up and down her arms. She needed to leave.

One doorway away from the hall, and her instinct begged her to stop. She did, her foot falling heavily, her balance off-center and every fiber of her being ringing in alarm.

Water dripped onto her arm. It startled her badly; she jumped, brushing it off quickly.

But it stuck to her gloved hand, sticky, white and thick.

She blinked, confused.

And then looked up, her stomach dropping to her feet.

Above her, through the hole in the floor she had previously leapt over, teeth the length of her forearms glistened with thick saliva. Beyond them, yellow eyes narrowed, the pupils little more than slits. Reptilian nostrils flared, blowing warm steam into the hallway.

Then the jaws opened, and she found herself staring down the sickly yellow of its gullet. In the back, flame gathered -- 

By instinct alone did she throw herself out of the way in time, rolling from the fire that spilled, thick as lava, from the creature’s throat.

“A dragon!” She exclaimed, mostly for the benefits of her own nerves. “A _dragon!_ One lives!”

The creature snapped its jaws shut on its own fire, sticking its head - which barely fit - further through the hole, its eyes pinning her in place. Its snarl shook the walls, its growl rumbling up through her legs and shaking her heart.

It looked hungry. It looked angry. It looked like it wanted to solve both problems by eating her.

“No thanks!” She told it, her voice somehow _not_ breaking-- and remembered herself enough to scramble up and _run._

The roar that followed her shook more than her heart: it rattled her very bones, making her stumble. She slapped her hands over her ears and tried to speed up.

Behind her, the floor did not crash down - instead, she heard stone groan and claws scrape overhead, as if the dragon were doing the same thing she was: about-facing and scrambling.

Well, it could do whatever it wanted! She burst into the main hall as fast as physically possible, and took the stairs down three at a time. Her instincts told her that leaving the fortress for the open-space of the courtyard would not help her, and that she needed instead to hide somewhere it could not reach; but below that, her hind-brain screamed only _run!_

She ran.

The dragon crashed after her, the main doors screeching in protest as it moved from what must’ve been the throne room and into the main hall.

Luckily, it did so only after she was at the exit - and though a roar of its displeasure and the hiss-crackle of its flames licked at her heels, she managed to dive out before either caught her. 

She found herself snagging a fallen man’s tower shield, and on reflex hoisting it up and huddling behind it even as she continued to, now backwards, make her way to the courtyard’s gates. It turned out she was fortunate to do so, as the dragon’s fire slammed into the shield not a second too soon.

The metal heated quickly, burning her leather sleeves and sinking pain into her arms - but she gritted her teeth and held the shield aloft, caring only that she would _escape._

In the end, she managed it. Not by virtue of out-smarting the dragon, or even out-running it, but because it declined to chase her into the courtyard -- rather, it bellowed at her from the fortress’s main doors, its claws scrabbling at the threshold and its wings - huge, black, webbed things - flaring behind it.

Whatever kept it inside, she didn’t care. She dropped the tower shield at the drawbridge, turned, and raced away.

\- - -

Her heart refused to leave her throat for hours after.

 _A dragon!_ They were as horrifying as the tales told. Sheer luck had allowed her to live. 

Was there a princess in the tower? She now wondered. If there was, it had to be dark and powerful magic indeed that kept the dragon from eating her. If Ben’s stories were true, then the princess was the rider…

She shook her head, cursing lightly to herself. Just because a dragon existed didn’t mean _all_ the rumors were true. She needed to hold onto her rationality, even if she felt shaken.

She found Artoo as dusk arrived, at the edge of where greenery turned to blackened, deadened land. 

Artoo nibbled on thin, brown grass. He was in his halter, his lead held by a man in unflattering beige and old brown robes, his sword peace-knotted at his side.

“Hello, young one,” he called to Ahsoka as she approached, “I am glad to see you return whole and alive.”

“Because the other option was _burned alive_ and, eventually, digested?”

“Yes,” old Ben admitted, oddly sincere in his remorse, “as most who approach the Tower are.”

“How do you know so much?” She demanded, feeling the stress of her near-death experience catch up to her and happily unleash itself upon this perfect target. “Who are you?” 

If her demand ruffled his feathers, he didn’t show it. He shook his head, and didn’t try to smile; his eyes, sad as they were, would have betrayed him. 

“I used to be a friend of the dragon’s, and its rider’s.”

Ahsoka frowned at him, thoughts churning. 

When she held out a hand for Artoo’s lead rope, the man passed it over. Artoo looked up from his meager dinner to tug, gently, at Ahsoka’s half-melted sleeve.

“General Kenobi?” she hazarded, eyes narrowed suspiciously. “The one who went overseas with the princess? The only one who survived a battle with the dragon?”

“The very same.”

“Do you usually follow people who go to confront it?”

“No.” He gazed at her with his sad eyes, hands clasping in front of him. “But I have spoken with a number of them before they do. None return. I suppose I… have grown weary of the undeserving wandering to their deaths at the jaws of my old friend.”

 _You need new friends_ , she thought, but didn’t say. 

Instead, she asked: “Do you know how to slay it?”

He shook his head, but didn’t speak.

She clenched her teeth. Her arms hurt like hell; her heart had just stopped pounding. She wanted nothing more than to leave. The dragon was _technically_ within her responsibilities as a hunter, but if it kept to its castle, she didn’t necessarily _have to_ bother with destroying it.

But even if it was stuck in its castle, people would continue to wander into its lair. And beyond that - when she replayed the confrontation in her mind, when she shook her fear at its presence and power from her memories - to be so trapped made for a miserable existence. Besides, if it escaped, what did it have? It was the last of its kind. Its rider and its love, if Kenobi was to be believed, had to be dead. Even a harpy didn’t deserve such a cursed life, and harpies were the _worst._

“I do,” she said, and held up the Warlock’s bag of onyx shards. “But I’d need an opening.”

“I can grant you that,” he said, voice soft. 

Something in him seemed closed-off. Reluctant, maybe. At his or her impending death, or simply confronting the dragon again, or even in managing what he said-- she didn’t know.

So she said, though she had no magic to bind them: “You promise?”

“On my word as a protector of the princess,” he said, his eyes closing, “I promise.”

\- - -

After a terse evening spent in the woods - during which she wasn’t sure Kenobi slept, but rather only meditated - and in the late morning of the next day, once they were outside of the drawbridge, Kenobi asked what her plan was.

While neatly leaving out who had told her, she described how she needed to get the dragon to eat one of the onyx shards. 

Kenobi nodded, then told her to stay behind him. The dragon would withhold its fire if it saw him, he said.

“Why?” She asked, as they headed across the drawbridge. Under her new leather shirt, her bandaged arms twinged.

(This was the stupidest thing she’d done, and she’d done a _lot_ of stupid things-- including trying to tame a pegasus.)

“That would be too swift a death for me,” he mused. 

She stared at his back, uncertain how she was supposed to take that. 

The courtyard was much the same as it had been the first time she came around. The only difference in the main hall was that the chandelier chain had snapped, its crystal spilling fragments of white light across the floor. The debris fell mostly to the sides, she noticed, as if a large body had blocked it from scattering across the main walkway. 

It was the only hint that she had run into a dragon. The castle, just as before, was eerily still and silent. Cold, again, settled like a blanket of ice across the fortress, though this time Ahsoka noted it sank into her heart and mind as much as her skin.

“You said you went overseas,” she whispered, unable to stand the quiet (though breaking it was probably just helping the beast know where they were), “why did you come back here?”

“Princess Amidala learned from a vision that the Separatists had- or, rather, _were going to_ \- besiege Naboo,” he answered. “Though she had given up her authority as royalty, we all felt responsible for the Kingdom’s safety. We had no choice but to return.”

“And then you ended up here?”

“To root out the Separatists once and for all.” He sounded far-off, as distant as the look in his eyes, as they began to head up the main hall’s grand stair. “It was… the dragon’s idea. We had arrived too late to save Theed from Count Dooku’s attack. The loss hit us all, but none harder than the dragon, whose heart bled for our home. He begged us to seek revenge. He argued it would only be just, and it would save others from falling to the same horrors as Naboo.”

That explained why she’d never heard of Naboo, then. But--

“I thought you said he couldn’t talk.”

“I said he couldn’t speak as you or I.” Kenobi stopped at the top of the stairs, closing his eyes and reaching a hand out like some sort of diviner seeking a God’s presence. His words became ever more distracted. “But rest assured, he understands perfectly well the tongue of man.”

Those were always the worst monsters.

After a moment, Kenobi’s eyes popped open. Where Ahsoka had before turned left, he turned to the right.

“He rests in the Tower.” 

Ahsoka nodded. Perhaps the General was a diviner - at this point, it wouldn’t have surprised her much. 

Kenobi bowed his head, tucking his hands into his robe’s sleeves. “We must move quickly.”

 _Obviously_ , she thought, but again, kept to herself. Instead, she fell into step behind the mysterious General, keeping her hands close to both her sword’s hilt and the onyx shards.

\- - -

On their first meeting, Ahsoka didn’t have the time or head-space to get a good look at anything but the inside of the dragon’s jaws.

On the second - after Kenobi led her, step by careful, quiet step, up the Tower’s spiraling staircase, both of them ignoring the claw-marks on the walls and growing, putrid smell of rot - she had a moment to take a better look.

The Tower’s top room was larger than she’d expected, though it felt claustrophobic with the winged reptile curled within its walls. The dragon lived up to its color descriptor: its scales were a deep black, the sunlight from the hole in the roof illuminating each scale’s edges with blues and greens and purples. What she saw of its belly was lined in softly glowing yellows and oranges, feeding up to its jaws and (closed) eyes, like molten metal poured through a blacksmith’s mold. Its wings were folded tight against its body, the webbing a dark, deep maroon.

Ash streaked its scales and one of its four horns - all curved like a ram’s with the points set forward, off-grey in color - was missing, clearly broken at the base, but those defects did little to curb its presence.

To Ahsoka’s eyes, the dragon was an impressive, awful beast. While it slept, she felt small and young next to it; _when_ it awoke, she was sure her terror would return, as no mere hunter was meant to fell a creature like this.

However, next to her, Kenobi said, barely audible: “Oh, Anakin. What have you done to yourself?”

In the center of the dragon’s makeshift nest laid a woman. Or, so Ahsoka supposed it was: as the source of the stench, the body had decomposed into ashy, web-like tissue and sun-bleached bone, its once-white gown coated in dust. 

She was laid out on a sheet, her skeletal hands folded over her stomach. The dragon’s slow breathing disturbed the tufts of brown hair stuck to her skull, but otherwise, the body looked as peaceful as only the dead could achieve.

Padme Amidala, most likely. Ahsoka couldn’t see what had caused her death - if it was a physical ailment, it didn’t show - but she was definitely, definitely long dead.

Ahsoka glanced to Kenobi. Though she hadn’t thought it possible, he looked even _sadder_ \-- as if the sight had taken what was left of his heart and given it the steel boot.

After a long time simply standing in the doorway (and ruining Ahsoka’s nerves), Kenobi tore his eyes from the dragon and dead woman. His expression was disturbingly blank when he met Ahsoka’s gaze, but when she raised an eyebrow in a silent _ready?_ , he nodded.

Then he strode forward and, before Ahsoka could think twice, stomped on the dragon’s ridged tail.

Yellow eyes snapped open immediately, Darth Vader rousing himself with a snarl on its-- _his?_ \- lips.

Ahsoka smartly took a step back into the stairwell, very ready to bolt. With a move like that, Kenobi had sealed his fate -- if he was to die, the least he could do was not take her down with him!

“Anakin.” 

There was that new name again. How many secrets did this guy have?!

The dragon’s snarl cut off abruptly, the reptilian face comically slack in surprise. 

Its tail lashed, striking Kenobi once in the shin - the man winced, but did not budge - before dragging back as the beast rose onto its haunches. Its wings brushed the ceiling though it curved its back and looked like it was _trying_ not to entirely destroy the roof.

Amazingly, however: it did not immediately strike or even rain fire upon their heads. In fact, its surprise remained, its head cocking to the side at its new guests.

“How could you let this happen?” Kenobi kept his hands clasped in front of him, his head tilted back, his voice pleading. He began to walk slowly to the left, away from the door, though it clearly strung tension along the dragon’s frame. “When was the last time you left this dreadful place?”

The dragon blinked, then hissed. The yellow lines that ran down its throat and belly brightened. Smoke began to rise from its nostrils.

And yet, it didn’t burn Kenobi where he stood. The former General was right about that, at least.

Kenobi shook his head, as if in denial of something he heard.

“I know.” His voice cracked with regret and a guilt so deep, it could have made a wraith jealous. “I _know_. I shouldn’t have left. I’m so sorry.”

Ahsoka dimly remembered she had a duty, and crept back into the room, going the opposite way Kenobi walked. In her hand was an onyx shard, gripped so tight its sharp edges cut into her palm.

She didn’t think it’d work, but something about the former General held the entirety of the beast’s attention.

The dragon hissed again, one of its claws raising to settle, oh-so-delicately, over the woman’s body.

Kenobi watched this. Even from across the room, she could see his jaw tightening.

“Old friend,” Kenobi finally begged, eyes flitting down to the woman’s corpse, “you must let go. She must be buried--”

That was the absolute worst thing he could have said.

Anakin, Darth Vader, _whatever_ he was called-- reared back as if struck, breaking his silent fixation with a growl that quickly grew into a roar. A bit of the roof broke from the force of his horns knocking against it, plaster and straw raining down into the room. His wings, flaring in apparent affront, stirred the room’s dust into a sharp, suffocating whirlwind. 

“Anakin!” Kenobi yelled, one hand raised to cover his eyes from the dust. “Please, listen to reason!”

Neither Anakin nor Ahsoka were happy to listen to that particular request. The dragon snaked his long neck down, across the woman’s body, and stuck his nasty face right in Kenobi’s, its outrage deafening and breath undoubtedly disgusting--

Still, Kenobi did not back down.

Ahsoka, however, saw an opportunity. She darted forward, nimbly hopping over one of the creature’s overgrown claws, and, against every instinct, shoved her arm into its splayed mouth and dropped the onyx down its gullet.

She’d been right. Its breath was noxious. 

She choked on the smell, and then yelped as its jaws slammed shut-- scraping her arm with its teeth and tearing red into her skin but luckily, _Goddess_ , **luckily** not fast enough to take off her whole arm. 

She wondered if this was how Ventress lost her arm, but that was be ridiculous.

She fell back onto her ass, all the same. It would’ve been her end, but the new intrusion into his throat had the dragon gagging. He again reared back, his massive head shaken to the left and right, tail lashing every which way. 

Despite his struggles, however, he did not spit the stone back up. In his distress, he ruined more of the roof. Though pieces of it fell onto Amidala, he still - somehow - managed not to step or crush or otherwise touch the corpse.

A small detail, but one that struck Ahsoka as distinctly tragic.

“We must go,” Kenobi told her, grabbing her arm and hauling her toward the doorway, or so she would later recall. So fixated was she on his yellow lines bleeding into a brilliant red, starting at his throat and flashing down his chest and to his stomach, she hardly noticed being tugged to the stairwell until she nearly tripped over her own feet and smashed her face into a wall.

Kenobi supported her all the way down, though she didn’t need it once they left the room. Something about him told her that he needed someone to hold onto, and she didn’t particularly mind the reminder she wasn’t alone, either. 

For around and behind and in front and _everywhere_ in the castle reverberated Anakin’s wailing cries, the sound disturbingly sorrowful -- and then _painful_ , as if the beast were being torn apart from the inside out.

Ahsoka was, all at once, very grateful they were no longer in the Tower.

They raced to the main hall, and back to the courtyard. Still, the cries followed them.

They were swift in their departure, their feet thundering against the drawbridge’s old wood. Still, the screams haunted their steps.

“He said it would fell a dragon in less than an hour,” she told Kenobi as soon as she felt she could hear something other than Anakin’s anguish, the two of them slowing their run to a heavy-hearted walk, the scorched earth’s dust and dirt swirling around their legs. “If you’re crazy enough to want to check.”

“Yes, I--”

Kenobi stopped.

Ahsoka, after two more steps, stopped as well, and turned to look at the former General.

His hands, she noted, shook.

“He?” Kenobi asked. “Who is he?”

Oh, right. Well, since their partnership would be at an end, and nothing she said would matter much for what had been done, anyway-- 

“A Warlock,” she admitted, refusing to feel shame for listening to a dark sider. “He had the answer. He knew a fair amount about dragons, come to think of it.”

“A Warlock,” Kenobi echoed, his eyes wide. She frowned at him, perturbed by his sudden distress after their run in with _a dragon_. “This far south. Did he wear purple robes? Was he accompanied by a large, blue, demon cat?”

“That’s,” Ahsoka stuttered, “a pretty accurate guess, yes.”

Kenobi’s old face paled.

“Young hunter,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically steely, “have you ever met the Emperor?”

“Of course not,” she answered, confused. “Why?”

Kenobi turned on a heel, staring up at the tower they left behind. It loomed in the distance, though dark clouds had joined it. The clouds seemed to collect around it, rumbling with blue lightning-- which made absolutely no sense, as the rest of sky remained a clear and peaceful blue. 

“You have now.”

If before he had been sad, now he looked terrified.

It was not an emotion he had before displayed, even with rows upon rows of massive teeth, gathering flame, and dragon spittal in his face.

Despite herself, though she did not wholly understand, Ahsoka found the fear sinking into her heart as well.

Far - but not far enough - from them, the black dragon crawled out of its tower’s destroyed roof. Its wings - tattered, she now saw, even from so far away - spread, lines of red shooting through the webbing. 

Its cry shifted from pain to anger. As she watched, it dipped its head one last time into the Tower’s room-- as if looking at its fallen rider, perhaps memorizing what it saw- and then re-emerged, flared its wings, and launched itself into the sky.

Its first flight in what had to be years was clumsy. Its wings struggled to catch air, its claws scrabbling at the sky as if it had forgotten how to fly. It toppled to the castle below, in fact, the breaking of stone under its weight loud across the empty plain.

But then it righted itself and tried _again_ , and this time, it succeeded. It rose to the clouds, a black nightmare ascending, and though its form was briefly outlined by the contained lightning, it soon-- disappeared. 

The clouds dissipated soon after. The land, blackened and barren, returned to its relative emptiness, and the corresponding stillness and false peace.

The heat of her wounds - the blood dripping freely from them, down her fingers and onto the dusty ground - nagged at her mind. But worse than that, _far worse_ , was the feeling of a being leaning toward her from behind, and the unnatural whisper that scraped against her ear. 

_Thank you, young hunter._

The voice, old and rasping, was evil in a way few humans or monsters could be. It paralyzed her on the spot, and filled her with a new dread. Distantly, she heard Kenobi call her name, but found she could not think beyond the Warlock’s words, quiet though they were.

_Thank you for delivering him to me._

Master Koon, she thought, would be so disappointed with her.

**Author's Note:**

> Just discovered the magic that is Clone Wars (and currently in the midst of burying myself in Rebels), knew I had to write something with Ahsoka and the prequel crew, even if not at all canon. Hope you enjoyed reading this strange little story!
> 
> Join me at unkingly on tumblr if you'd like. :)


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